Friday, October 07, 2011

Notes from the road...

Before I left on this little jaunt, I actually picked up the book that was on the pile next to my copy of The Worst Hard Time. I wish I'd grabbed the latter also, as we traversed pretty much half the territory covered in the book yesterday, and every road sign was jarring up little "Wait, that town name sounds familiar..." memories.

Spent much of the day driving across the TX panhandle, or rather passengering across it. It's an area that's long fascinated me. The cool thing is that, as vast as the place is, you can see most of it from one place with a stepladder and a pair of good binoculars. I have joked about places so flat you could watch your dog run away for three days, but yesterday I saw them.

There is something really Bonanza-meets-The-Jetsons about sitting on the front porch of your hotel out on the high plains, which probably pre-dates the automobile by a year or two, and using its wi-fi network to update your blog.

The late Grady Nutt, the much loved preacher and comedian, observed that the Panhandles, Alta y Baja Tejas, were so devoid of highway traffic that if you had a flat tire on the way to church you took your Sunday best off and changed the tire, bare.

"Because the panhandle is so flat and you can see people coming from so far away, you could knit yourself a new suit before they can get to where you are."

Yup. Been there and done that. It was the literal truth. Before the Interstates.

Red Skelton used to tell a joke about driving across Texas for three days and not seeing another vehicle for the entire trip. Finally they saw a building in the distance. As they got closer they realized it was a gas station with a large barn out back. Painted on the side of the barn was the message "Don't ask for directions. If we knew anything, we wouldn't be here."

I lived in Amarillo for three years, nice place, wonderful people. Stick around for a while until you can experience a Texas panhandle ice storm. I have lived through winters in South Dakota, Minnesota and Wyoming and have never seen anything like a Texas ice storm.

To keep yourself occupied, try counting antelope as you head west across New Mexico. My record on the section of Highway 64 from Clayton to Raton was 2,000; I stopped counting then.

And, as you get near the mountains, watch for elk, particularly at night. They make lousy hood ornaments. Remember, they are taller than your headlights. Look for the legs, which are much darker than the body, because that's what you'll see at night.

If you come back that way, there is a nifty little battlefield memorial east of Cheyenne, OK. It seems the US Army, back when, attacked a sleeping Indian winter camp. The Army comes off looking quite, um, massacre-ish today. There is a nearby Seargeant Creek, (where one squad faced actual awake and armed resistance, and lost big time) and north of town is Dead Indian Lake.

Mmm, I don't want to mislead you. I would consider Cheyenne, OK, to be a, well, small-ish kinda town.

I like living the the Panhandle because 1) when stuff happens, everybody chips in to help and 2) you can see the weather coming. And once you know what to look for, it's not all that flat. Mostly. OK, the run from Dumas to Guymon is a little lacking in topographic relief, but it's not that bad. Really.

I read that Venus is even better than that part of Texas in that way. Supposedly, once you get below the clouds, you can see halfway around the planet because of refraction effects. It's even hotter there, though...